Published on 12, July, 2020
I've been wondering about this for a while...I used to be very depressed but when I looked up the diagnostic criteria, my symptoms never really matched, I used to look up different types of depression too but none of them sounded like me. I went to a professional too and they also said I probably don't have it until I talked about suicidal thoughts, then they gave me a prescription. It all made me feel like an imposter. I had many symptoms but either they fluctuated too greatly and were not as persistent as the criteria says, or I never had the right combinations of symptoms or my experience didn't match with the described experience of that type of depression.
So, was it autism that was doing this?
Sometimes people conflate misery with depression. They are not the same thing.
FWIW I had an NHS contract paying me 20 quid an hour and was able to score my own depression on every chart I came across.
Every single test told me to "get help".
But as an I.T person working in those workspaces of the people who are tasked with giving the help, and often whilst they are sitting next to me, and by being just a tad observant, stopping short of being truly "nosy", (as some I.T. people are, let me tell you) I concluded that what I actually needed to do was snap the **** out of it and start to enjoy the life I have rather than the life I seemed to have lost or at the very least "missed out on".
Either that worked, or it was a side effect of the semi-accidental combination of rave drugs I took a few years afterwards, that obliterated my suicidal ideation in one hit, apparenlty forever that I'd been carrying fro 40 years, who knows.
I wish I could share my good fortune in that regards better, but it really needs some proper research to be done by real people. (I took two of what were called at the time "research chemicals" a couple of hours apart, and it seeems to have been every beneficial to me) I did take pains to keep remembering over the years how much of each chemical I took. 300 measured millgrams of methylone and 200 approx of mephedrone in water (if any neuroscientists are reading this and wondering what did he take...) given that I have a BAD reaction to the two SSRI's I have tried (no more of that, thank you) and most people do not, it may be that combo of chemicals that really did obliterate my urge to do myself in and think about it which I'd had since I was 13, will only work for some sorts of brain chemistry. But it mght work for a lot of people, who knows.